Best fantasy names in literature

[aco175]

Panamon Creel, Stee Jans, Garet Jax, Keltset, Walker Boh, Meantwrog, Mwellret, Jachyra, etc.

I do not care for some of these names myself. I find that using names hard to pronounce and/or names that cause me to stop reading to go over a problem. Some of the others mentioned above like Dickens and Shaw are fine to me.

 

[MGibster]

To me, Tolkien's names all sound the same, making it harder to keep track of who was who. George Martin is even worse since he reused the same name over and over.

At least most of Martin's names sounded real. I will say I do thing Tolkien was pretty good at giving his characters names. They feel just as a real as Martin's names to me.

I can usually get on board with most names, as long as they don't consists purely of As, AEs, Xs, THs and Ys. And no apostrophes. There was a time in the nineties when it seemed like every turd farmer had to be called Asthae'yala'aex or something. And there was a law against using Os and Us in names.

When I saw this thread it was the first thing I thought of. A bunch of the cheesy fantasy books I read in the 90s were filled to the brim with strange names, often with apostrophes for some stupid reason.

 

[monsmord]

Shout out to Mervyn Peake - which is a great name on its own - and the Gormenghast names. A modern Dickens.

When I read really fantastic fantasy, as opposed to Medieval European retellings, I like the names to feel odd, unwieldy. Clark Ashton Smith's stuff often rings that bell. Some - not all - of the naming in the Malazan books is fun, and I'll second Glen Cook for flavour.

 

[Tonguez]

TPratchett
Beatrice Potter - I've used Jemima Puddleduck and Mrs Tigglewinkles Shop in games

 

[Ath'kethin]

Upstream someone mentioned Glen Cook for the Black Company, and I'd like to add his Garrett Files to the list.

Pular Singe, Tinnie Tate, Deal Relway, Morley Dotes, Saucerhead Tharpe, Westman Block, Belinda Contague, Harvester Temisk, the Dead Man, Marengo North English, Glory Mooncalled, The Goddamn Parrot, Grange Cleaver, the list goes on.

 

[Tonguez]

Of course the real world has some awesome names too Stede Bonnet, Rabban Sauma, Khan Krum, Johannes Rommel, Vercingetorix, Vitruvian, Hayam Vuruk, Amina Sukhera, Ryangombe, Calamity Jane, Ibn Batutta, Philander Chase

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Aslan
Reepicheep
Fafhrd
Tempus
Lythande

 

[jdrakeh]

It's science fiction rather than fantasy, but still fantastic - James Bolivar diGriz.

 

[Joshua Randall]

A bunch of the cheesy fantasy books I read in the 90s were filled to the brim with strange names, often with apostrophes for some stupid reason.

No discussion of pointless apostrophes in names would be complete without this Bulwer-Lytton contest “winner” from decades ago:

xHrps'tphlng manoeuvred his gleaming hover car over the hot sands of Ybl'g'fnrPqn, pondering his conversation with Ambassador ffFFptbh|lknguf concerning his suspicions of treaty violations by the Iuq_nuHcnwef'kjcbaygqwtt in the BbBbBqr&'hrAwnk sector.

 

[Mannahnin]

E.R. Eddison alternates between amazing names and silly ones with almost no in between

Amazing:
Gorice XI and his immediate successor, Gorice XII
Koshtra Pivrarcha (a mountain peak)
Queen Sophonisba

Silly:
Brandoch Daha
Goldry Bluszco

How dare! Brandoch Daha is clearly on the "amazing" side of that divide. Along with Lord Juss, Lady Mevrian, and Duke Corsus.

But Goldry Bluszco is definitely on the "silly" side, with La Fireez, Lord Spitfire, and Fax Fay Faz.

But I guess this is just a minor example of how subjective good naming can be. While consistency and grounding names from a given culture in similar morphology using similar phonemes is pretty universal, taste is definitely individual.